


The Cauldron of Morning

by rainjrop



Category: B.A.P, K-pop
Genre: Coda to One Shot music video, Gen, Horror, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 11:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainjrop/pseuds/rainjrop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You only have one chance, you know." What happens after the second ending of "One Shot" when that chance is lost? As bonds are irreparably broken, a monster is created...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Into the Red Eye

**Author's Note:**

> This story is inspired by the second ending of B.A.P's "One Shot" music video, where Youngjae betrays his friends and they're arrested. Watching the video beforehand is recommended to understand this story. 
> 
> All titles are borrowed from Sylvia Plath's poem "Ariel". 
> 
> Thanks for your time :)

A rounded, tanned face slid into view, gazing through the doubly reinforced plastic that made up the viewing port in the door. The face was expressionless, blank, cold. Yongguk sneered, adrenaline pounding through his veins at the sight of that face. Without a sound, he hurled the blue tray at the window, ignoring the loud clatter as it bounced off the door and fell to the floor. The sound echoed, trapped in the sealed cell.

Yongguk gained a sort of vindictive satisfaction when kimchi smeared across the port, obscuring the view, and the face disappeared.

Hunching forward on his bed, Yongguk rested his chin in his clenched fist, eyes tightly shut as if in pain. The camera could no longer see his face, nor the near paralyzing hurt that twisted it into something ugly. He mouthed the name of that man – that face – involuntarily, unwilling to give the guards who may be listening the satisfaction of hearing him break.

_Youngjae._

***

“We did it for you!” he half-growled, half-shouted, rising up out of his chair in uncontrolled rage. And perhaps his hand shook against the table in desperation, his voice the wounded howl of an animal that’s been hurt one too many times. He didn’t resist as the surrounding officers slammed his back into the hard chair, as they yelled at him to stay still. Yongguk was motionless, staring ahead at Youngjae, ignoring the shouts of the rest of his crew, his family. Even Himchan’s low, raspy voice was audible in the mayhem.

Youngjae didn’t do anything but glare balefully from the opposite side of the room.

“Order in my courtroom!” the frowning judge snapped.

Yongguk met Youngjae’s glare and held it. His handcuffed wrists hung limply between his knees. His fingers twitched with movement as if trying to grasp something intangible. The eye contact was broken as Youngguk’s head lolled forward, loose and slow. The officers on either side eyed him warily; elbows lifting form their sides, muscles bunching, breaths deepening, minds preparing for motion. The defense lawyer’s words marched on, staccato and slightly rushed, an artificial and slowly withering confidence ringing through each word like the sour note from a cracked bell.

The eyes, the eyes of Youngguk’s family moved toward him, steady as if caught in a smooth groove, or running along a track. The officers surrounding the four of them were ignored; they no longer existed except for their tense breaths that sucked in and rushed out.

And Youngguk tilted his chin up, eyes hooded, lips twitching in a derisive sneer. The pain of betrayal that cloaked his shoulders (it had hit him like their bullets hadn’t) evaporated like mist in the sunlight: there was a vague memory of it having existed, but it was faded, burned away by a stronger force.

Youngjae’s eyes, sharp like needles, met Yongguk’s again.  
  
It seemed as though the lawyer had fallen silent, or perhaps it was simply that no one could hear him any longer. The silence was like a vacuum, an implosion, sucking everything away to some undefined point, leaving the occupants of the room feeling like they were building toward a peak and the buildup suffocating them. And Youngguk’s voice rose, a breath of air, a gasp in an airless space, “Come.”

The air rushed back into the room with all the force that was missing from its extraction. Observers physically rocked backward, their ears popping painfully, chests shaking, bodies desperately scrambling to adapt.  
  
Youngguk’s eyes flashed, they burned, red and dark. Hot cracks cut from the corners of his eyes, glowing red and terrible. Smoke curled from his clothed shoulders and the reek of hot metal rose from the floor. Youngguk opened his mouth slowly as if to speak. His throat produced no sound, but everyone heard the swelling, blistering roar of an infinite number of agonized voices, screeching, begging, howling their pain. His own voice might have threaded through the cacophony, but the sound was too jarring for anyone to tell. It held a physical presence, a sharp and jagged knife tapping the bones of your ribs, the tip held against the center of your eye. As it crescendoed, Youngguk’s eyes burned, and grew brighter, the cracks by his eyes intense orange like the flames of a forge.  
  
Just before it became too much, when the cops thought about using their guns not on the prisoners, but on themselves, and Youngjae thought his eardrums would burst and his mind would disappear with his hearing, a deafening snap cracked through the room. Youngguk’s family was no more: Himchan, Daehyun, Jongup, and Junhong were no longer staring forward as if frozen. In their place, and Yongguk’s, all that remained were flaky, delicate swirls of gray ash fluttering to the floor.  
  
Youngjae felt hot, overly warm like a child caught in the grip of deadly fever. As the screeching, howling agony echoed in his ears, he knew the demons he had created would return.


	2. Dead Hands

It was bright. Bright and hot.

Sharp yellow light slid under his eyelids, blinding him beneath them. The heat was tight and prickling, pressing against his skin like the flat edge of a blade running over his cheeks and forehead, scraping down the bridge of his nose. Youngjae thrashed on his bed, tangled in the red-hot sheets, back arching and chest convulsing as if he could escape the inferno, but the movement only pushed him further into the heat. He could not scream and he could not cry. He could not wake, but he was not asleep.

A hand reached for him, its skin black and hard, cracked and breaking to reveal molten orange skin underneath. Yellow fire oozed and dripped from jagged pits that were once fingernails. The agonizing heat intensified as the hand reached for his neck slowly, inevitably. It touched his skin and his throat tore from the silent, desperate, howl of a dying animal. Youngjae was being consumed. He saw a pair of eyes, bright white, and he didn’t know if his own were opened or closed anymore. The hand sizzled, grip tight around his neck, but it did not squeeze.

And it was gone.

Youngjae wrenched forward, choking, and listed to the side, crashing to the floor. He was panting, desperately kicking to free his legs from the vice grip of his sheets. Tears slipped from his eyes, uninhibited and unnoticed. The shuddering man crawled for a few feet before pushing himself to his feet and tripping into the bathroom. He fumbled against the wall to find the light switch. The bright flash when they turned on had him jerking back, body remembering the encompassing hellfire he'd just escaped.

Forcing his eyes open, Youngjae gasped, throat stinging, when he saw his reflection. A bright red, clearly defined handprint wrapped around his neck. The skin was visibly irritated and damaged, with little blisters forming near the fingertips. Youngjae reached up with a shaking hand, fingers brushing the bottom edge of the burn. It stung for a second, but then began to burn anew, the sensation spreading until he felt like the terrible hand had returned.

The lights snapped off with a sharp pop.

Youngjae stared into the mirror in wretched horror as two burning eyes slowly opened behind him.


End file.
